Bilborough College Nottingham

A selection of writing by A Level students

You

You are sitting, silent, tired. You are alone in a sitting room
reminiscent of great-grandparents, stuffy and cluttered. There is a long
clock ticking to your left, a monotonous baritone chasing the seconds.
You are waiting.

You sigh and gaze at the diamond wreathed fleur-de-lis patterning the
curtains until your eyes lose focus. You find that your lips are opening
and closing in time with your head twitching from side to side in time
with the god forsaken long clock. Your eyes are wide and vacant now and
your right index finger too has caught the bug, tapping in unison on
your best black trousers while your big toe pushes at the supple leather
of your shoes.

At least a minute has passed of mental quietude. Not a thought has
entered your head. Gently, your eyes slip back into focus as you realise
that counted as a thought. The gold thread machined into ancient moth
eaten drapes makes you wonder, why?

You decide it doesn’t matter, you can’t think straight right now. You
drank too much last night, your thoughts are saturated in treacle, and
your tongue still feels fuzzy. You lose focus of the room again, the
colours muting to grey, blue and brown.

You are sitting, silent, tired. You are alone in a room reminiscent of
great-grandparents, stuffy and cluttered. There is a long clock ticking
to your left, a monotonous baritone chasing the seconds. You are
waiting.

Nichola Taylor-Cockayne

You have got to be joking…

You have got to be joking. You've been living in this cellar you call a
guestroom for a year now, venturing out once a day dressed as Arthur
Dent for Lucky Strikes and strawberry milkshake, which will sustain you
until Mrs Havers persuades you to eat an egg, or a coconut, or
something, and you have been telephoning me sporadically to read aloud
from the memoirs of Alec Guinness and have finally acknowledged that he
and Redgrave may have been more than friends. When you are outside and
on your mobile to me, because I am your only contact, you talk loudly
about things which you believe mark you out as an intellectual in the
hope that an erudite passer-by may take a shine to you. You don't want
to have to talk to them, you just want to be admired by strangers. The
progress reports in which you inform me of how much of the life works of
Bruce Robinson you have memorised are unnecessary, because while I once
emulated you, I now have greater ambitions than becoming an alcoholic
in an old coat whose boots smell of Essence of Petunia, and absinthe
really is as poisonous as everybody said, and the only reason you ever
liked me anyway is that my grandmother was Irish and I suffered from
insomnia. You know by now that nothing is coming from above to save you
so you want to drag me down as well. Will I marry you? You have got to
be joking.

Liz Matter

Understanding

Do you even understand the meaning of love?

Well excuse me! But you seem ignorant
to the fact that I never stopped understanding
never stopped loving…
Hypocritically, you do not understand
you never loved yourself

Eros, Philia, Agape,
you show me merely words.
Why don’t you show me feelings?
You’re still in there, hidden
under layers of sex, self pity, secrets.
You are here, you are always here!

Ask me again…
Do you even understand the meaning of love?
Do you even believe my words?
Amy Fitzpatrick

Running

One day I woke up with the darkened room splintered by rays of sunshine
streaming through the gaps in the curtains. Midway through the daily
morning eye wiping session, I noticed a scrap of paper dotted with
scribblings. It read:

“Tom. I have another early start this
morning, a meeting in central London. I’d like to see you again, I’ll
give you a call. Claire.”

I stared at it stupidly for some time. She didn’t have an early start or
a meeting in central London. She was probably now having a coffee in
the Nero around the corner, killing time. I scratched my head slowly. I
was paying for her drinks, her food and her cab fare home on a seemingly
regular basis but once the excitement and rush from the previous night
had descended, she couldn’t wait to shoot off somewhere else. In fact,
we had been out many times, but I’d never seen her in the morning. I
should have a tattoo on my forehead- M.U.G. This was practically
prostitution, albeit dressed up with the pretence of some sort of
relationship. It drove me insane.
I had to dash. I bounded down the stairs and out of the door in almost
one movement. I started running. I had no direction or purpose other
than to run as fast as I could. I was racing! I was like Linford
Christie, steroids or no steroids. I found myself under a bridge by the
side of a murky river and I realised I had no idea how I got there.
My sides ached, my lungs burned, my head throbbed and the muscles in my
legs and arms cried out for mercy but still I carried on running. I felt
an external force pulling me and willing me to run faster and faster. I
was on autopilot like a dog on a lead, and felt a painful obedience to
keep running.
Suddenly, I ran slap bang into a red painted door with a gold number 36
on it. I crashed back onto the cold concrete, panting, my head swimming
and the feeling of nausea rising within me. This was my own house, I
realised. Somehow, for some reason, I had run my way back home without
even realising it. Then I saw, like in a dream or an hour of
drunkenness, the door open. A vaguely familiar pair of eyes were staring
down at me. Claire was standing there, seemingly swaying from side to
side.
“Where have you been?” I heard her say in the distance. My head throbbed
and my vision became blurred. “I went to the loo and when I got back to
the bedroom, you’d gone. You look a state, what happened to you?”
All I could mutter was “…the note..note…?”
Gavin Williams

Ode to Bed

Dear God
I love my bed.
When I was little, and I mean really little,
It was my house.
They came and they stared
And they tickled me through the bars.
Then when I was bigger (but still little)
It was my trampoline
And it never threw me off
Just the teddies who looked at me funny.
I wasn’t so little
By the time it was my pirate ship
My castle for me to be king of, my den in the forest
My ‘I-don’t-want-to-go-to-bed’ bed
My ‘change-my-mind-with-a-cookie’ bed.
But then I grew bigger
And it became my sofa, my workstation
My library-bed, my storage space
I felt like the princess at times
Only instead of peas, I had textbooks.
Then it was my comfort
A hug.
A shoulder to cry into, a punch bag on occasion
I treated my bed badly, and I’m sorry, God
Because then it turned around
It was my marital bed.
My count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two bed
My rose-petal holder bed. Home of my dreams.
Now it’s a different bed
It smells funny and the sheets are crisp
People come and stare
They don’t tickle me through the bars anymore
But it’s still my bed
All of my beds have been my bed
Dear God,
I love all of my beds.
Even this,
My death bed, my heaven-sent messenger bed.
My don’t-look-at-the-light bed.
Thank you for this bed,
Amen.

Laura Ducker

20/11/2006 Stimulus: Flight

A feral sort of feeling, flight. Fleeting, but free- oh, so free.
And full of friends, flying friends, like fabled fairies and ferocious
falcons, swans, doves. Angels, maybe. Balloons, on occasion, released
from the hand of a tiny child, and gaining height. An improbable flight.

Eyes bright, by a tiny window. Outside, moonlight, serenely floating
above frugal clouds. And I, light, amidst angels and fairies tonight,
only tonight. A sight to cheer your young heart.
You are flying too. In a huge contraption that seems too ungainly to be
airborne. Not like me. I dance like a kite, alighting then fluttering
away from those huge fake wings. You would always choose a window seat, a
wing seat. To look down over a sleeping world. A world you are leaving.

I dangle my feet from the edge of the wing- cold in the North Atlantic
air. Land rushes below, tiny lights at midnight. A million people
asleep, flying on their own wings- their dream wings. Yet you fight to
stay awake on this boring flight. Let go, bite the bullet, come soaring
with me and my feathered friends. An emigration to Los Angeles will do
you good. In the bosom of the City of Angels. Get you away from it all,
finally. But is final what you want? Isn’t final the flight path you
never wanted to take? A fall? Fleeing what’s never forgiven, but almost
forgotten? Failure?
My fingertips meet the window, and my feet hold their grip on this fake
wing- ferrous and weighty. At the funeral, you asked if Mummy could fly
with the angels. I’d answer fully, but now you’re asleep, your fair hair
straying across your face, fluttering in your breath, mingling with the
fabric of the headrest. Fast asleep. Sleep tight.
Send a paper plane my way when you get to LA. I’ll be on the next flight over.